The Inigral Blog’s Best of Spring 2010

Tony Zanders

Hello there! We hope your Spring season has been as productive as ours has. Besides staying healthy from allergies :-), a lot of things have been keeping us busy in San Francisco. Here’s an update on what’s been happening in our market, our company, and with Facebook for colleges this Spring!

Demystifying the Schools App

By Tony Zanders

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from our clients asking about the different implications of adding the Schools on Facebook application to their personal Facebook accounts. Here are a few reasons for you to rest assured that we’ve thought about you, your concerns, and how our design makes the difference.

How Facebook is Eating the Internet

By Michael Staton

Inigral was at f8, the Facebook Developer Conference, and my friends previous assessment that “Facebook is Eating the Internet” finally became a reality. Here’s how they’re doing it.

Three of the Biggest Factors in Student Retention are Social

By Michael Staton

Three of the top five institutional factors in student attrition are social in nature.

Facebook’s f8 2010

By Tony Zanders

We’re front row at this year’s f8 – Facebook’s Annual Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA. We ran into one of our friends at Facebook who’s been up all night to make sure everything runs smoothly today, and she guaranteed that we’re in for a treat.

Admitted Student Social Networks: 9 Questions to Ask

By Tony Zanders

An up-and-coming trend in college admissions is to adopt an Accepted Student Social Network. An Accepted Student Social Network, for those of you just getting on the bandwagon, is a private web community, often white-label, that accepted students enter in hopes of further connecting to their peers and, hopefully, to your institution.

Accepted and Enrolled Student Communities Using Ning: No Longer Free

By Michael Staton

Ning just announced they’re killing the free version of their niche social networks. In the battle of Ning vs. Facebook, Facebook won bigtime. People are more interested in connecting with their friends than with niche communities…. Or, are they?

Understanding the Power of Twitter

By Carolina Madrid

If you’re a Twitter hater, you might want to read this. I was a hater myself only a few months back. “I don’t have anything to Tweet about and I don’t care what others are Tweeting about” was my mentality. Funny thing is, I had — and still have — so many friends who shared my belief about Twitter’s uselessness.

2010 Twitter Facts and Figures

By Tony Zanders

This morning at Chirp, Twitter’s first Developers Conference, their CEO, Ev Williams revealed some interesting facts about Twitter. Some key takeaways are:Twitter has 105,779,710 registered users. Read more here.

Social Media for College Admissions Professionals: The Beginners Guide

By Tony Zanders

Social Media is one of the most popular trends in higher education today, yet folks are still anxiety ridden. How much time should we be spending on social media? Who is doing it right? Who is doing it wrong? Are we missing something?

The Hidden Truth About Facebook Fan Pages

By Nate Villegas

When it comes to my hundreds of friends and dozens of groups, I am constantly bombarded with News Feed stories by the second. While some of these stories interest me, those that do not are mostly Fan Page stories. To understand why that is, I decided to take a look at the Fan Pages I “fan” and how they communicate.

What Employers Can Do for Postsecondary Completion

By Michael Staton

This is what Employers can do to encourage Postsecondary Degree Completion. We got this copy from a circular by the Gates Foundation to the Business Convening they had for Employers on March 23, 2010 in Washington DC.

Employers for Student Retention and Persistence: Gates Foundation Business Convening

By Michael Staton

I was honored to present Schools on Facebook, our Social Network for Student Retention, to major employers at the Gates Foundation Business Convening. Learn about my experience here.

And BTW Higher Ed, Facebook’s Changing Again

By Tony Zanders

Unlike previous major updates to Facebook, they are showing progress in terms of updating users of major changes and releases before they take place to allow people to prepare. This is a practice that every service provider should aspire to master. And at Inigral, we’ve taken some queues from the team at Facebook ourselves in terms of keeping our community up to date.

Social Media Spring: Cleaning: Presentations, Guides and Other Goodies from 2009

By Tony Zanders

Our marketing team has been doing some Spring Cleaning. For us, this doesn’t just mean re-organizing our Dropbox folders and directories. But we’re going to be publishing some things that have were only shown to people at conferences or brown bag lunches we’ve sponsored at various universities. Below, find an assortment of resources for you to share with your team on campus.

Social Media for Student Retention: Gates Foundation Hones in on Possibilities

By Michael Staton

The Gates Foundation has a goal of doubling the number of young people who earn a postsecondary degree or certificate with value in the marketplace by the time they reach age 26. Nick Punt, VP of Product, and I were honored to help shape the Gates Foundation’s thoughts on social media and degree completion at a meeting in Seattle on March 29, 2010.